Events of Translation: Digital Devices, Teachers, and Students as Networked in Material and Embodied Processes of Reciprocal Pedagogy

• In Event: Embodied Epistemologies and Methodologies in the Digital/New Media Curriculum

Abstract

The mutually influential roles that humans and objects play in networks of interaction are part of a curriculum of process—events unfolding. Studying educational processes from the perspective of actor network theory aids in understanding of how objects and humans are continuously defined in relationship to one another. This paper is a narrative inquiry into the embodied and material experiences of pedagogical events experienced and shared by teachers who were adopting new technologies and approaches in their teaching.

The theoretical perspectives of actor network theory (ANT) and Ellsworth’s (2005) knowledge in the making, assist in tracing the relationships between objects and people as they are mutually articulated in different contexts. Ellsworth (2005) uses the concept of the transitional object, to emphasize how our creative use of an object can open a “pedagogical pivot place” where our imagination is activated (2005, p. 76). We use digital devices/objects in ways that expand our discoveries. The object “becomes pedagogical when we use it to discover and creatively work and play at our own limits as participants in the world” (Ellsworth, 2005, p. 78). Participants in this study used the document camera as a transitional object to shift the emphasis of teaching from skill development to imagination, innovation, and exploration.
Research participants in this two-year narrative inquiry were 10 art and music teachers who were members of a collaborative inquiry group. I present participant’s stories about teaching experiences, which they shared in semi-structured group interview. Teachers used digital devices/objects (such as the document camera) as part of their self-study of student-centered and inquiry-based teaching methods. I interweave participant’s first-person narratives with theoretical discussion thus exploring the performative qualities of teaching in respect to teacher’s stories of their embodied feelings of “energy.” For example, in one narrative, teachers describe their energy as shared between their body and the document camera as embodied surrogate or avatar.

Drawing on the ANT sensibilities of symmetry and translation (Fenwick & Edwards, 2012), I argue that teacher’s explorations of the functionality and role of the document camera mirror their own explorations of pedagogical shifts relative to contexts where they are studying their own teaching: their local teaching sites, and the shared context of the collaborative inquiry group as a place of professional learning and sharing among arts education colleagues.
Teacher’s storied conversations are more than a re-telling of their past experiences. Teachers were working in collaborative inquiry, constructing scenerios for devices/objects to assume new potential, shifting the role of the teacher, and refocusing on student work and student ideas. This narrative research has important implications for understanding networked interactions among digital devices, teachers, students, and classroom environments to investigate and theorize how pedagogical shifts and translations are mutually articulated.

References
Ellsworth, E. (2005). Places of learning: Media, architecture, pedagogy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Fenwick, T. J., & Edwards, R. (2012). Researching education through actor-network theory. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.

Author

• Mary Elizabeth Meier, Mercyhurst University